Zeenews Bureau
Rohtak: Riding on a come-back wave as indicated in trends, INLD’s OP Chautala on Thursday demanded that the Governor Jagannath Pahadia not call the Congress to form government.
“Combined opposition is leading on 51 seats while the Congress is ahead on 49. They may lose one or two more seats. Morally, they can not stake claim to form Government,” he told reporters.
He added there were reports of seals of EVM machines being tampered with in many constituencies like Ballabgarh and the objection of the people was stamped down by the police.
The Congress emerged as the single largest party in the Haryana assembly elections but was not able to get a clear victory. The party won 40 of the 90-member assembly seats, the INLD won 30, the Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) won 6, the BJP 4 and Independents 7. The BSP won one seat in the state and Others won one.
For a simple majority in the assembly, the Congress needs 46 seats. It had won 67 seats in the February 2005 elections.
Chautala won from Uchana Kalan when he defeated state Finance Minister Birender Singh by a margin of just 621 votes.Birender Singh, a powerful Jat community leader from Jind district, was aspiring to be chief minister if the Congress returned to power.
INLD was written off as the opposition was fragmented in Haryana and the Congress had called for an early election for the same reason.
Ajay Singh Chautala, the elder son of former Haryana Chief Minister, won from the Dabwali assembly seat by defeating K.V. Singh, a close aide of Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, by over 12,100 votes.
However, Chautala's younger brother, Ranjit Singh, who contested the Rania seat on a Congress ticket, lost the election to INLD candidate Krishan Lal by over 3,650 votes.
Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda admitted the results were not to his liking.
"Yes, the results are not as per our expectation. But the Congress is going to create history by forming a government in Haryana for the second term. We will examine why we ended up with fewer seats. The Congress will form the next government in Haryana."
He claimed that it was for the first time since 1972 that a party government was being repeated in the state.
Party sources say that the less than emphatic victory it expected could impact Hooda's claim to be chief minister with leaders like union minister Kumari Selja and Kiran Chaudhary gunning for him.
Hooda, who started his day on a normal note by playing badminton, said that there was a set procedure in the Congress that was followed in the nomination of Chief Minister. "I am a candidate for the Chief Minister's post and not a claimant," he reiterated.
The results were a dampener for the Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led Congress government that opted for early assembly polls -- seven months ahead of schedule -- to cash in on its victory in the May Lok Sabha polls when it won nine of the 10 seats.
Four ministers in the Hooda government -- Finance Minister Birender Singh, Transport Minister Mange Ram Gupta, Education Minister AC Chaudhary, and Cooperation Minister Meena Mandal -- as well as state Congress president Phool Chand Mullana lost in the election.
First Published: Thursday, October 22, 2009, 17:01